ne, containing eleven
arches of 50 feet span: its length is 800 feet, but a considerable
part of each end is hidden from view by mills erected since its
construction.

On the brink of the island which separates the main stream of the
river from that produced by the waste water from the mill-race,
will be seen _a scaffold or platform_ from which an eccentric but
courageous adventurer, named _Sam Patch_, made a desperate leap into
the gulf beneath. Patch had obtained some celebrity in freaks of this
description, though his feats be not recorded, like the hot-brained
patriotism of Marcus Curtius in olden history. At the fall of Niagara,
Patch had before made two leaps in safety--one of 80 and the other of
130 feet, in a vast gulf, foaming and tost aloft from the commotion
produced by a fall of nearly 200 feet. In November, 1829, Patch
visited Rochester to astonish the citizens by a leap from the falls.
His first attempt was successful, and in the presence of thousands of
spectators he leaped from the scaffold to which we have directed the
attention of the reader, a distance of 100 feet, into the abyss, in
safety. He was advertised to repeat the feat in a few days, or, as he
prophetically announced it his "last jump," meaning his last jump that
season. The scaffold was duly erected, 25 feet in height, and Patch,
an hour after the time was announced, made his appearance. A multitude
had collected to witness the feat; the day was unusually cold, and Sam
was intoxicated. The river was low, and the falls near him on either
side were bare. Sam threw himself off, and the waters (to quote the
bathos of a New York newspaper) "received him in their cold embrace.
The tide bubbled as the life left the body, and then the stillness of
death, indeed, sat upon the bosom of the waters." His body was found
past the spring at the mouth of the river, seven miles below where
he made his fatal leap. It had passed over two falls of 125 feet
combined, yet was not much injured. A black handkerchief taken from
his neck while on the scaffold, and tied about the body, was still
there. He is stated to have had perfect command of himself while in
the air; and, says the journalist already quoted, "had he not been
given to habits of intoxication, he might have astonished the world,
perhaps for years, with the greatest feats ever performed by man."

The Genesee river waters one of the finest tracts of land in the state
of New York. Its alluvial flats ar